Sunday, February 21, 2016

(JPost) Saudi Arabia's new religious police recruits are now being trained in more than enforcing modesty standards. According to various reports across Arab media, cadets are taking a five-day course in combating wizards, witches and as-of-yet unconfirmed plague of leprechauns blighting the Kingdom.

Saudi media reported that 30 members of the religious police, formally named the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPV), completed the course in February. Classes educated the officers in how to identify and safely apprehend the dangerous suspects who may be travailing the Arabian desert, such as Sharia-desecrating elves.

(Jewish Journal) Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been very reluctant to expand on his foreign policy plans on the trail, especially with regards to Israel and the conflict with Palestinians.

On Tuesday night, at the first televised debate of the Democratic presidential primary, Sanders might be obliged to address foreign policy issues at greater length.

In general, the self-described socialist has said that he supports the two-state solution and an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During a campaign event in NH two month ago, Sanders said that he does not have a “magical solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which has gone on “for 50 years.” Nonetheless, he declared that the United States “should be evenhanded for Israel and the Palestinians.” Adding, “Palestinians are entitled to a state of their own, and the United States should do what it can to make sure that state has a strong economy. Israel is entitled to live in security, not be attacked. Those are the two guiding principles that I will work for.”

But as Sanders is growing in the polls, so is pressure being increased by progressives and pro-justice groups on the insurgent candidate to adopt a more left-wing approach to Israel and be more vocal about his policy views. He was recently compared to the newly elected UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has openly supported the BDS movement and is known for his anti-Israel stance.

His brother Larry, who lives in England, revealed in a tweet a few months ago that he supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. “that Israel end occupation of West Bank, siege of Gaza, Palestinians in Israel equal rights. Netanyahu obstacle to peace. BDS yes,” Larry Sanders tweeted on April 20, 2015.

Larry has been very supportive of his older brother’s campaign, opening up the window for the media to peek in on Bernie’s upbringing and Jewish childhood in Brooklyn. In April, Bernie Sanders credited his brother as a large influence on his politics. “I owe my brother an enormous amount. I grew up in a family that did not have a lot of money. My dad came to this country at the age of 17, dropped out of high school, never made any money. My mother graduated high school. We did not have a lot of books in the house, and it was my brother who actually introduced me to a lot of my ideas,” he said during a press conference.

In the past, Sanders suggested that he would support cutting off arms to Israel to regain clout on Middle Eastern foreign policy.

A spokesperson for the Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for an inquiry about his views on the BDS movement.

Hillary Clinton addressed the matter a few months ago, in a letter sent to Hollywood mogul and major Democratic donor Haim Saban. Clinton expressed her “alarm” over the movement’s efforts attempting to “punish Israel and dictate how the Israelis and Palestinians should resolve the core issues of their conflict. “This is not the path to peace,” she wrote. “We need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign and undermine Israel and the Jewish people… We need to make countering BDS a priority.

ISTANBUL — Turkey is confronting what amounts to a strategic nightmare as bombs explode in its cities, its enemies encroach on its borders and its allies seemingly snub its demands.

As recently as four years ago, Turkey appeared poised to become one of the biggest winners of the Arab Spring, an ascendant power hailed by the West as a model and embraced by a region seeking new patrons and new forms of governance.

All that has evaporated since the failure of the Arab revolts, shifts in the geopolitical landscape and the trajectory of the Syrian war.

Russia, Turkey's oldest and nearest rival, is expanding its presence around Turkey's borders — in Syria to the south, in Crimea and Ukraine to the north, and in Armenia to the east. On Saturday, Russia's Defense Ministry announced the deployment of a new batch of fighter jets and combat helicopters to an air base outside the Armenian capital, Yerevan, 25 miles from the Turkish border.

Blowback from the Syrian war in the form of a string of suicide bombings in Istanbul and Ankara, most recently on Wednesday, has brought fear to Turkish streets and dampened the vital tourist industry.

The collapse of a peace process with Turkey's Kurds has plunged the southeast of the country into war between Kurds and the Turkish military just as Syrian Kurds carve out their own proto-state in territories adjacent to Turkey's border.

The economy is in the doldrums, hit by fears of instability and by sanctions from Moscow targeting such goods and revenue sources as Turkish tomatoes and tourism in retaliation for the downing of a Russian plane in November.

Worries that the tensions could escalate further are spreading, both in Turkey and in the international community, prompting French President François Hollande to warn on Friday that "there is a risk of war between Turkey and Russia."

"Turkey is facing a multifaceted catastrophe," said Gokhan Bacik, professor of international relations at Ankara's Ipek University. "This is a country that has often had problems in the past, but the scale of what is happening now is beyond Turkey's capacity for digestion."

A rift with the United States, Turkey's closest and most vital ally, over the status of the main Syrian Kurdish militia, the People's Protection Units (YPG), has further exposed Turkey's vulnerability. A demand by President Recep Tayyep Erdogan that Washington choose between NATO ally Turkey and the YPG, its main Syrian ally in the fight against the Islamic State, was rebuffed by the State Department this month, despite Turkish allegations that the YPG had carried out the bombing in Ankara.

On Saturday, Turkey dug in, demanding unconditional support from the United States. "The only thing we expect from our U.S. ally is to support Turkey with no ifs or buts," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told journalists in Ankara.

Turkey now stands completely isolated, trapped in a maze of quandaries that are partly of its own making, said Soli Ozel, professor of international relations at Istanbul's Kadir Has University.

"It has so alienated everyone it cannot convince anyone to do anything," he said. "It is a country whose words no longer carry any weight. It bluffs but does not deliver. It cannot protect its vital interests, and it is at odds with everyone, including its allies.

"For a country that was until very recently seen as a consequential regional power, these facts strike me as quite disastrous," he added.

Most immediately, Turkey is agonizing over the fast-changing dynamics along its southern border with Syria, where Russia is bombing, Kurds are advancing and the rebels it has supported against President Bashar al-Assad for the past five years are facing defeat.

Sending troops into Syria, as Ankara has hinted it might, would risk a confrontation with Russia that Turkey would almost certainly lose. The downing of a Russian plane in November was, in retrospect, a major miscalculation, analysts say, one that has hamstrung Turkey's ability to project its influence into Syria and prevented it from flying missions there, even in support of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State.

Not to intervene would mean bowing to the inevitability of an autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria bordering Turkey's own restive Kurdish region, as well as the defeat of the rebels Turkey had hoped would topple Assad and project Turkish influence into the Arab world.

For now, Turkey has confined its response in Syria to artillery shelling against the advancing Kurdish forces and efforts to reinforce the rebels. A rebel fighter in the border town of Azaz, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive, confirmed multiple reports that Turkey has facilitated the deployment of several hundred rebel fighters from the province of Idlib into Aleppo, via Turkish territory.

At the same time, Erdogan has sought, without success, to revive pressure on the United States to agree to long-standing Turkish proposals for the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria that would protect Syrian civilians who have sought refuge from the fighting along Turkey's border.

Most observers think direct Turkish intervention unlikely, at least for now. There is no public support for a war and no support for one within the Turkish armed forces. A group of more than 200 academics signed a petition this past week urging Turkey not to go to war in Syria, and the military has publicly stated that it is not willing to send troops across the border without U.N. Security Council approval.

But that has not deterred Erdogan from continuing to threaten action, drawing supposed red lines and seemingly digging Turkish policymakers deeper into a hole from which there is no obvious escape. He recently said the fall of rebel-held Azaz to the advancing Kurds would be a "red line" and vowed that Turkey would not allow the creation of a refuge for militant Kurds in Syria.

Turkey's predicament is not entirely self-inflicted. Some of the broader global trends — such as Russia's increasing assertiveness and the United States' waning interest in the Middle East — could not readily have been foreseen when Turkey set about crafting its ambitious foreign policy earlier in the decade, analysts say.

But Erdogan appears to have misjudged the extent to which the shifting parameters have constrained Turkey's room to maneuver, according to Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at the Wilson Center in Washington.

"Erdogan has mismanaged foreign policy because of hubris," Barkey said. "He was overconfident in 2010 that Turkey was the darling of the world, and that went to his head. There are setbacks that are not of his doing, but how he managed those setbacks are his doing."

When Erdogan is also confronting unforeseen challenges to his domestic ambitions, notably his plans to amend Turkey's constitution to enhance his presidential powers, further Turkish missteps cannot be ruled out, said Bacik, the professor in Ankara.

"I'm not saying that Turkey has lost its mind and is poised for war, but the posture in Ankara is very strange and could lead to surprises," he said. "What's happening in Syria is a question of survival for Erdogan, so it is not possible to rule anything out.

European diplomats have warned the Turkish government that it cannot count on the NATO support should the conflict with Russia escalate into an armed conflict, according to German media.

Ankara has called for a joint ground operation in Syria with its international allies, insisting it is the only way to stop the country's five-year war. Saudi Arabia has said it would be ready to take part in an international force to be deployed in Syria.

But Russia, which has been carrying out air strikes in support of main regional ally Bashar al-Assad, has voiced its opposition to the operation. It also called on the Security Council to press Turkey to halt its shelling of Kurdish forces in northern Syria - but it was rejected.

Turkey's plan was based on the assumption that, in case of conflict, the country could invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the collective defence clause if any member state is attacked.

But Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn told German magazine Der Spiegel that the Turkish government cannot count on Nato.

'NATO cannot allow itself to be pulled into a military escalation with Russia as a result of the recent tensions between Russia and Turkey,' he said.

Asselborn also stressed that Article 5 can only be invoked when a member state is clearly attacked.

A German diplomat echoed Asselborn's stance and said:

'We are not going to pay the price for a war started by the Turks.'

On Friday, French President Francois Hollande also said that Europe needs to prevent a conflict between the two nations.

'There is a risk of war between Turkey and Russia,' he said in an interview with France Inter radio.

BOSTON (AP) — A major backer of Harvard Law School has stopped sponsoring student events after its donation helped pay for a discussion on Palestine.

In 2012, the international law firm Milbank promised Harvard $1 million over five years to pay for scholarly conferences organized by law students. But after the money was used to support an event hosted by the student group Justice for Palestine, the law firm asked Harvard Law School to use the money for other purposes.

Calls to Milbank's New York headquarters weren't returned this week. In a statement, Harvard said Milbank was never involved in deciding which events to fund and that the school will now pay for student events with other resources.

Harvard says Milbank wanted to "avoid creating any misimpressions that the firm endorses the viewpoints expressed by any particular student organization or journal," according to the statement, provided by law school spokesman Robb London.

In October, students in Justice for Palestine hosted a talk examining what they say is a movement to suppress advocates of Palestine. Harvard had previously awarded the group $2,000 to hold events throughout the semester using the Milbank donation. The group says it spent about $500 for pizza at the fall discussion.

Before the event, an email from the law school's dean told the group that Milbank's logo must be "prominently displayed" on all advertisements. In that spirit, the group thanked the law firm in a Facebook page advertising the event, said Collin Poirot, a first-year Harvard law student and a member of the organization.

The next day, law school administrators asked the group to remove all references to Milbank on their Facebook page, citing complaints from the law firm, Poirot said. And soon after, students were notified that the Milbank Student Conference Fund was being discontinued.

WATCH: (Scroll Down For Video) The United States has deployed tanks and artillery equipment to classified Cold War-era caves in Norway.

The move is an attempt to increase NATO’s defences in Europe and have weaponry ready to use.

Col. William Bentley reported to CNN: ‘Any gear that is forward-deployed both reduces cost and speeds up our ability to support operations in crisis, so we’re able to fall in on gear that is ready-to-go and respond to whatever that crisis may be.’

Russia shares a 121 mile long border with Norway.

The cave system is still regarded as highly classified.

The caves were first used by the United States as storage for weaponry in 1981.

The caves are climate controlled and are currently operated by over 100 US and Norwegian personnel.

It is estimated that the caves currently contain enough equipment to support over 15,000 troops.

A drill is scheduled to take place later in February, called Cold War Response, where over 6,500 pieces of equipment will be deployed.

12 NATO allies and over 16,000 troops will be involved in the exercise.

The deployment comes after the Pentagon confirmed a $3.4billion budget to deter Russia.

(JPost) Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, arrived in Iran on Sunday to receive urgent medical treatment for his cancer, after his condition recently deteriorated, Lebanese media reported on Monday.

According to the reports, Nasrallah was evacuated to the Iranian hospital, where he was treated by doctors from Russia and North Korea, after cancer cells spread to new parts of his body.

In light of Hezbollah's silence about the medical condition of its chief, anti-Hezbollah Lebanese activists began spreading rumors about Nasrallah's death. However, Nasrallah is expected to deliver a speech on Tuesday evening, during the Memorial Day for Hezbollah's martyrs.

Taking advantage of Nasrallah's absence, the Lebanese politician Saad Hariri vehemently attacked Hezbollah's chief. Speaking on the 11th anniversary of the assassination of his father, Rafik Hariri, Saad Hariri claimed that Hezbollah is the main party responsible for the presidential vacuum in Lebanon that has lasted 21 months.

Hariri also vowed to prevent the organization from dragging Lebanon, an Arab country, into hostilities with Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab states, and claimed that Hezbollah is fighting in the wrong places with the wrong excuses.